Mutants and Masterminds! (Quickie Review)

[Erik Mona]

Not only did designer Steve Kenson pay a ton of attention to playtester comments, but the game's editor (me) went through the entire yahoogroup archive message by message, making sure that every playtester comment posted there was considered and addressed in the final manuscript of the game. We didn't always agree with the playtester feedback, but we nearly always talked about it and in most cases made changes to the game to accommodate the needs and wishes of our playtesters.

I'm thrilled people have had a chance to pick up Mutants & Masterminds. Of all the things I've worked on for d20/OGL/D&D so far, this is by far the one that makes me most proud.

Here's hoping it meets your superhero needs, and that you find the lovely goodness provided by Super Unicorn Design Studio to your liking.

Thanks,

Erik Mona
Lead Editor
www.superunicorn.com

 

[NLP]

I would say that while it isn't quite as comprehensive as HERO, the game is a LOT faster because it still uses the basic d20 combat mechanics, instead of the Speed and Phases that can really bog down a HERO game. It's got about 100 sample powers and a pretty good system for designing new ones. You can't finesse it like HERO or GURPS because M&M uses an arithmetic method for determining power costs instead of using multipliers, so a power limitation only reduces the final cost by a point.

It is not the Speed Chart which slows down HERO System combat. All the adding of dice slows down the combats. 5 heroes, 25 attacks per turn, 12d6 per attack. That is a LOT of adding, and all that adding takes time. Then on the other side you have a GM rolling for 5 villains, 25 attacks per turn, 12d6 per attack.

Time your self while you roll 12d6 50 times and add it up. You will find that it takes a long time (probably 40-60 seconds to gather, roll, and add per attack). If you use average damage for the attacks (even if just the GM uses average damage for the villains and the players get to roll) you will cut combat times by up to 80%.